English in Multilingualism

Speaker Bios

Speaking on Inquiry: Li Wei is chair of applied linguistics and director of the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics, at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London (UCL), UK. His research interests are bilingualism and multilingualism, including language development and disorder of bilingual and multilingual children, social and cognitive processes of bilingual and multilingual practices, and bilingual education. His recent publications include Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education (with Ofelia Garcia, 2014) which won the 2015 British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Book Prize, The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-Competence (with Vivian Cook, 2016), and Multilingualism in the Chinese Diaspora Worldwide (2016). He is principal editor of the International Journal of Bilingualism (Sage) and Applied Linguistics Review (De Gruyter), and co-editor of Chinese Language and Discourse (Benjamins) and Global Chinese (De Gruyter). He is also Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (AcSS), UK.

Speaking on Equity: Joseph Lo Bianco is professor of language and literacy education at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, and serves as past president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (the first educator elected to this role). In 2012 he was appointed research director of the UNICEF Language and Peacebuilding initiative in Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand. Since 2011 he has served as senior research advisor for a European Commission project titled Languages in Urban Communities: Integration and Diversity for Europe (LUCIDE), conducting research on multilingualism at the municipal level in 12 European cities. In January 2014 he became an academic adviser with the National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education at Beijing Foreign Studies University, 中国外语教育研究中心, providing advice to the State Language Commission and supporting academic research initiatives.

Speaking on Professionalism: Robinah Kyeyune trained at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, as a secondary teacher of English language and literature in English, going on to practice in a peri-urban girls-only boarding school, which she herself had attended as a student, and a large metropolitan co-sex boarding school. She describes her teaching experience as the understanding of varied learner interests and abilities that are directly linked to what parents, teachers, and political leaders tell learners, often indirectly, about the value of language in education and in life after school. Her teaching and research passion is in what learners and teachers do with language, and what language education policies do to learners, their teachers, and entire societies. She has written on English as a language of instruction in secondary school and on the bilingual instruction policies. From a background of training secondary language teachers at Makerere University, she is the senior education technical advisor at the USAID/Uganda School Health and Reading Program implemented by RTI International with Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports. The program aims to improve the reading abilities of early grade learners and the health seeking behaviors of youth. Dr. Kyeyune holds a bachelor of arts degree with a concurrent diploma in education, and a master of education (teaching English language and literature) both fromMakerere University; a master of education (TESOL) from University of Leeds, UK, and a doctorate (managing change in education) from University of Kent, UK.